Jury expected to get Iraqi refugee's case Thursday

By Robert Gavin

Updated 9:32 pm, Wednesday, April 2, 2014

For the third time in three-and-a-half years, a Middle East refugee brought to the Capital Region is charged with a sex crime in Albany.

In all three cases, the men were part of the same federally subsidized refugee assistance program — and two of them lived together.

The current defendant, Salam Al Haideri, 24, was questioned at his rape trial on Wednesday by a prosecutor about conversations he had, after his arrest, with the foster parent he met through the program.

Earlier, his alleged victim had testified that Al Haideri slammed her 96-pound body into the street and raped her behind a trash bin in Colonie in the early hours of June 2 after they had met in a bar on North Pearl Street. Al Haideri, who faces 25 years in prison if convicted of rape and predatory sex assault, said sex with the 19-year-old woman was consensual.

The jury is expected to get the case on Thursday.

The arrest of Al Haideri, an Iraqi refugee, followed the cases of Walid Nehma, an Iraqi refugee imprisoned for the attempted rape of a woman near Capital Repertory Theater in 2009, and Salah Mhawesh, an Egyptian refugee who in 2012 pleaded guilty to first-degree sex abuse of a woman in his home on Central Avenue.

Paul McAvoy, a Catholic Charities spokesman, said the program — in which the federal government screened refugees — was ended more than four years ago.

Members of various groups, including the First Unitarian Society congregation in Schenectady, helped refugees settle.

They included Jacqueline Foster, 73, a Niskayuna grandmother who said she was Al Haideri's foster parent in the refugee program.

On Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Chantelle Cleary questioned Al Haideri about inconsistencies in his accounts of the alleged rape and about conversations he had, following his arrest, with Foster. Cleary asked Al Haideri if he remembered speaking to Foster about how Foster drove around trying to find the scene of the alleged rape at Central Avenue and Vly Road.

"Isn't it true that you and her discussed that there was a loading dock?" Cleary asked. "She told you there was a loading dock there, right?"

"I can't remember what she told me," Al Haideri said.

Foster, who sat in the front row with her husband during the trial, later told the Times Union that she took Al Haideri into her family's home after fire struck the residence where he lived with Nehma. Al Haideri has lived with her for four years — and Nehma lived briefly with her family as well, Foster said.

She said she believes Al Haideri is innocent.

Asked if she has any regrets working with refugees, she said: "No. I just have a regret that this terrible thing happened. I'm sorry this happened to this young woman and I'm sorry that Salam is charged with this. I'm devastated by this."